Posted on

Have we ever seen a summer like this before?

The same hot day without rain over and over and over is beginning to get on my last nerve.

Some people get their emotions all out of whack when it is cloudy and cold and dark all the time. It’s called SAD, for Seasonal Affective Disorder. I may not be depressed from the temperature peaking near 100 degrees every day and “nary a clown in the sky” as someone used to say. One can be danged sure though that I am truly sick of, seemingly, the same high pressure center parking its hot rear end over my part of the world and seeing how long it can stay there.

I know folks around these parts who say they can’t remember a hot, dry spell like the one we have been having here in Southeast Texas. I can remember such spells but they were not exactly in this part of the state. Most recently I think of the Summer of 1998 while living in Waco. That summer was No. 4 on the all-time list of consecutive 100-degree days in that “Heart of Texas (HOT)” city with a total of 29 days in a row, according to the National Weather Service. This year is the new No. 1, with a string of 44 days when the temp was at least 100. That streak thankfully ended on Aug. 12.

Before that was the summer of 1980. I lived in Nacogdoches that year, about two hours to the north of where I now live. I worked then as a firefighter and was in between semesters in college. I remember it as plenty hot then as I lived in a little shotgun shack with an air conditioner that gave its all in a house surrounded by no trees. But we had nothing of a summer in comparison with Dallas and even Waco. That was the No. 2 Waco summer of consecutive 100-degree days with 42 in a row. Dallas had it much worse that 1980 summer as it was the all time number of consecutive and total days of 100-degree days. I remember a friend told me a story about being inside a Dallas bar at 10 p.m. during that summer and the deejay announced, to applause, that the temperature had fallen to 100 degrees.

But I don’t remember summers like that where I now live, which is basically within 60 miles of where I was raised.

And thus a little new history from this summer in nearby Houston:

…THE 100-DEGREE DAY RECORDS FOR SOUTHEAST TEXAS… …2011 NOW HAS MORE 100 DEGREE DAYS THAN ANY OTHER YEAR IN CITY OF HOUSTON WEATHER HISTORY… THE HIGH TEMPERATURE HAS ONCE AGAIN SOARED TO 101 DEGREES IN HOUSTON. THIS IS THE 22ND CONSECUTIVE DAY THAT THE MERCURY HAS CLIMBED TO THE CENTURY MARK. THIS IS ALSO THE 33RD TIME THIS YEAR THAT THE 100 DEGREE THRESHOLD HAS BEEN REACHED OR EXCEEDED. THIS BREAKS THE RECORD OF 32 ONE HUNDRED DEGREE DAYS ESTABLISHED IN 1980.

MOST CONSECUTIVE 100-DEGREE DAYS AT HOUSTON (DOWNTOWN/IAH): (RECORDS SINCE 1889)

1. 22 DAYS – ONGOING AS OF 8/22/2011

2. 14 DAYS – ENDING 7/19/1980

…

It is difficult to interpret all of our local weather records which come out of the National Weather Service office in Lake Charles, La., probably because they have a much smaller office there. However, the August maximum temperatures for Beaumont/Port Arthur show that, so far, no records seem to be broken as for temperature. I didn’t check the rainfall records because that would have really depressed me.

So yes, it is hotter than a million dollars worth of 2-dollar pistols here. Maybe we have never seen a summer like this one before although perhaps our ancestors did. When we start talking about possible culprits is where the real heat begins. I’m talking about the dreaded “GW” and no I’m not talking about Gee Dubya (W) Bush. I think even he expressed his belief in global warming, to which I refer.

It is getting impossible to have a civil discussion on global warming. The conservative propaganda machine, the best the world has known at least since that fun fellow Dr. Goebbels, has managed to make the GW into one of those controversies such as religion or abortion. If you are not on their side you are on the wrong side, no matter what.

After college is when I first began considering this global warming debate, some 25 years ago. I remember discussing the matter over several pitchers of beer one day with two friends, one with a Ph.D. in chemistry and another who now years later holds a doctorate in geology. I wasn’t really sold on global warming back then because of the obvious cyclical nature of weather. But today I do believe that, yes, we have global warming and that, yes, it is caused by humans. Despite the strides the neo-Goebbelist machine has made, most polls are reflective of this one conducted by Yale and George Mason universities which show a solid majority still believe global warming exists and is man made. A fact sheet from the National Geographic Society also is enlightening both on the subject itself and on the so-called “smoking gun” conservatives used to attempt discrediting major scientists who have researched extensively the topic.

That the right of the right-wing Republicans are so against what the majority of Americans see as a perfectly sensible scientific fact because primarily they have been led to do so in the name of big oil is particularly puzzling when you have big petrodollar people like GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman who acknowledge this “inconvenient truth.” Oh and by the way, the Huntsman Corp. bought Texaco’s chemical unit in Port Neches, in our county, for $850 million back in 1994. Did the Huntsmans contribute to global warming? Is Jon Huntsman Jr. running a Democratic Party campaign in the GOP as a way of saying “sorry” to places burning up by warming caused by his family’s business? I kind of doubt it.

Such a speculation is just that. But there is plenty of room for people to amicably argue about global warming without going nuts. Just make sure you have the air conditioner turned up to Warp Speed as well as your tower fan before doing so.

Posted on

The ‘Good Party Man’ and why he should beat Rick Perry

 

There is plenty yet to be written about Gov. Good Hair Perry but I will say little about him today because there certainly is no shortage of words being written about him. — HA! I ended up writing more than 1,300 words here, sucka! — I won’t bet, although I will say at this point in time which is way too early to be talking about this, that Rick Perry will win the nomination. Not for president he won’t. He might get on the ticket as Veep candidate.

Look at the history of the Republican Party and you will see evidence of it nominating the so-called “good party man.” This is someone who pays his dues for years, and “don’t rock the boat” a lot. You see, the Republican Party wrote that song “Rock the Boat,” but it actually goes “rock the boat, don’t rock the boat baby, rock the boat, don’t turn the boat over … ” You remember it from the disco years by a band called the Hues Corporation.

The GOP believes, at least in theory, in laissez-faire. That is a French word, which in translation means: “Eat more frog legs.”

No seriously, in the Republican sense it applies to economics. Wikipedia describes the LF-word as “an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies.”

And so forth. Hey Brother Vonnegut, here’s to you man, wherever you may be hiding.

That reluctance to intervene does pretty much define the Republican species in any matter except intruding on an individual’s personal civil liberties and starting wars and just about anything else just as long as no one rocks the boat that the monied class be ridin’ upon. Sheet man, ain’t nothin’ but a thing.

Look at past Republican presidential nominees in the past 50 years and ye shall surely see:

Richard Nixon — Took a lot a crap in his rising political career leading up to his ascendency as Ike’s VP.

Barry Goldwater — Bless his old cactus-laden heart, he atoned in his later years but up to the point when he ran against LBJ he was a reactionary’s reactionary, thus just what the Republicans wanted during that period.

Richard Nixon — Ta da!! Mr. GOP until that little matter came along known as “Watergate.”

Gerald Ford — Jerry Ford was a fine man whom I now believe was right in pardoning Nixon. I also believe Nixon was not the most evil person to occupy the White House (See George W. Bush). Ford had been around for a quarter century in the U.S. House. He served eight years as Republican Minority Leader. He was even part of the famed “Warren Commission.” You couldn’t get more Republican than that! Ford was the only man who served both as vice president and president without having been elected to office. I can’t happen to think of a better person for the time and I will always respect Jerry Ford even though I didn’t agree with everything he did. Oh and he was one of my three Commander-in-Chiefs during my four years of the Navy. Is that a record, or what?

Ronald Reagan — He wasn’t every Republicans’ favorite and ran a testy primary campaign with George H.W. Bush. But by the time he got to the nomination stage at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, he was “Good Party Man” Reagan.

George H.W. Bush — I have said it before, I will say it again. No man was ever better qualified, in theory, for president of the U.S. of A. Navy pilot shot down in the Pacific. Oilman. Member of the U.S. House. Ambassador to the U.N. Envoy to China. CIA director. Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Banker. Professor. Think tank director. Man, no one was probably better prepared since maybe Andrew Jackson (‘cepting of course, Old Hickory wasn’t a Republican.)

Bob Dole — Say it as he says it “Bobdole.” Another endearing Republican. Catch ’em while you can, they’re fading fast. Dole was badly wounded in the Apennine Mountains of Italy in WWII. He recovered although his right arm was paralyzed. He became a lawyer after the war. He ran for the Kansas House. Was a county attorney. He spent eight years in the U.S. House. He spent nearly 30 years in the Senate where he served both as Senate Majority Leader and Minority Leader. Oh, he also served as RNC chairman.

George W. Bush — George was anomaly of sorts. He was elected twice as Texas governor — see Texas governors — but did have his dad G.H.W. and granddad, Prescott Bush, a high-powered Connecticut Yankee banker, and later U.S. Senator. I suppose you could call “Gee Dubya”  a “legacy” good party man.

John McCain — McCain, a son of a son of a sailor (and a son of a sailor), well there is a debate as to whether Navy officers are “sailors.” Actually, McCain was a III. Junior and Senior were admirals. McCain was shot down and spent five years as a POW held by the North Vietnamese and retired as a Navy captain. He spent a little time in the U.S. House and was elected to the Senate in 1987, where he remains today. He might have been elected president had not he chosen one of the least qualified vice presidential candidates (and that’s saying a lot) in history, part-term Alaska Gov. Sarah “Caribou Barbie” Palin. Nonetheless, McCain remains someone I still like and respect although he can be nuts sometimes.

So there you have it. The history of the GOP good party man probably goes back even farther, in fact, it does although a few flies show up in the ointment sometimes (See George W. Bush and Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower.) So at this early stage, it seems like Mitt Romney is the Republican good party man. And once again, should he be chosen and should he accept (right) he too will be a partial product of a legacy. His father, George Romney, was a former president of General Motors and was governor of Michigan. Romney Sr., also a Mormon, ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1968 even though he was born in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Although the Constitution states the president has to be a natural born citizen, Romney seemed to have found a loophole, according to Wikipedia:

“While the Constitution does provide that a president must be a natural born citizen, the first Congress of the United States in 1790 passed legislation stating: “The children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond the sea, or outside the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens of the United States.” Romney and his family fled Mexico in 1912 prior to the Mexican revolution. However, the Naturalization Act of 1795 repealed the Act of 1790 and removed the language explicitly stating that the children of US citizens are natural-born citizens. As such, it is inconclusive whether Romney was eligible for the office of President.”

Always, always remember it is Wikipedia you are reading my friends. It could be right, it could be wrong, it could be, well, it could be damn near anything. That’s what makes it Wikipedia!

McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, as a military baby. President Obama was born in Hawaii, which was a state by the time he was born. Yet, only Obama was questioned as to his citizenship because his father was Kenyan and Babybama lived in Indonesia for awhile when he was a kid. Go figure.

Whew, that’s way more than I intended to go but by now you should get why I say Romney should get the nomination. That is, if the “good party man” theory which I learned from Dr. J. David Cox at Stephen F. Austin State University — a great Political Science professor in my mind — holds up these days.

In actuality, if this theory really held up, the GOP nomination would be U.S. Rep. Ron Paul. He’s been in politics since Cal Coolidge was a law clerk riding on the back of a jackass over the hills of Western Massachusetts looking for witnesses to depose. But no, Paul will actually end up becoming my congressman because of redistricting. Ain’t I the lucky one?

Posted on

Ricky, you got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do

It had to come out sooner or later. I mentioned last week the rumors that were going around in media circles quite some years ago that Rick Perry was gay. I still don’t know. Like Seinfeld said in his classic “The Outing,”: “Not that there is anything wrong with that.”

If Perry and his folks were less full of themselves, they would make the Good Hair man’s life an open book. Every phone prank he ever made as a kid, each Prince Albert in a can of which he inquired, every time he showed up at his hometown Dairy Queen as a kid after swilling a couple of bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, every stupidity he committed while attending Texas A & M, each time he flew right when he should have flew left as an Air Force pilot, blab everything that might even close to being offensive to every American voter that he committed as a state legislator, lieutenant governor and governor, plead mercy with PETA for killing that coyote and above all apologize to the Texas State Trooper’s Assn., and every present and past state trooper for that “Get on down the road” thing.

In other words, Ricky, you got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. And apologizing. But Good hair won’t do that. Like his predecessor, George “Gee Dubya” Bush, Rick can do no wrong.

We shall see what we shall see.

Posted on

Rick Perry. OMG!

Well, it’s all over but the lying. It is pretty much official that Texas Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry will seek the GOP nomination for president. A spokesman for the state’s longest-serving governor — like the old Wolf Brand Chili commercial said “And that’s too long” — will make his announcement on Saturday somewhere at some kind of event full of Republicans.

The only good I can see come of this is if he eventually resigns as governor. I hope I hope I hope that doesn’t happen because he’s been elected president. I can’t take another term of a “Rexall Ranger,” what we used to call “drug store cowboys” or “goat ropers.” Oh, I know Perry was supposedly raised on a farm. He might have even been in FFA and have engaged in some of those supposed “Greenhorn initiations” with a chicken. Who knows what folks will find if they look far enough back. Why there was even this big rumor going around about five or six years back questioning the sexual orientation of both Perry and his Lite Gov. David Dewhurst. Whether any of it’s true or not, I don’t care. Well, maybe except the part about the chicken. Chickens are for eating, don’t you know?

We are going to hear a lot in days and weeks and months to come about how Perry practically reinvented this great state and put every last soul to work. I know that’s a lie because I was unemployed and sleeping in my pickup truck for a couple months under his governorship. Oh and he has done such a stellar job with immigration, hasn’t he? It was especially nice that he let those thousands of migrant workers come up here to Southeast Texas and put roofs on houses which were blown away by Rita and Ike. Let’s see what else he did. Oh, caused mayhem in the education system because he would rather “save a little for a rainy day” than make sure Texas schools had plenty of teachers. Need I go on? I think I will.

There are tons of issues that Perry ignored during subsequent legislative sessions such as the future of water in Texas, making sure Texas isn’t one big environmental s**thole. Instead, he declared that an emergency existed that pregnant women needed to see an ultrasound of their fetus because it just “might” change their mind. I’m not being judgmental. But I’m just saying.

We will hear a lot about this guy. Perry will have the Texas “Marlboro Man” mystique about him, for awhile at least. Let’s see, Perry would make, what, two Texas presidents who were male cheerleaders? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Sometimes I wish I could just do a Rip Van Winkle and go to sleep for a long, long time. Unfortunately, when I woke up, things would probably be either the same, or perhaps even worse.

Posted on

Rick Perry: Truth, lies and the Grateful Dead

It was, sort of, by accident that I stayed at a hotel on Saturday that was just a block or two from Reliant Stadium in Houston. That was where our Texas Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry was holding a semi-large prayer meeting. I say semi-large, the semi-official draw to the free event at the Houston Texans football home was about 30,000. That is about 15,000 less than Joel Osteen preaches to in person at the Lakewood Church at what was once known as “The Summit” and “Compaq Center” which is, I am guessing, about 4 miles to the northeast as the crow — or white dove– flies. I must point out as well that I once saw the Grateful Dead in concert in The Summit. It was during a break to buy a very overpriced beer during that concert that the sweet lady selling me the brew told me out of nowhere: “You don’t look like you’d listen to the Grateful Dead. You look more like a Merle Haggard fan.” Well, I told the sweet lady, I am indeed a big Merle fan. In fact, I once helped Merle get out of jail after he got tanked up on Lone Star Drafts and some unknown black tablets in a bar up in Cut and Shoot, in Montgomery County or Liberty County or wherever, and he shot out every light bulb in the place and then went to shooting out car lights along Highway 105. If you see a crease on the Cut and Shoot city limit sign, just about halfway between the city sign and a smaller sign pointing out that Cut and Shoot is “a NRA All-American City” that was where Merle missed when I took the Colt .45 from his speeding hands just after he fired his last shot.

Now, everything I wrote after I wrote “I am indeed a big Merle fan.” is a lie although I did stop once at a bar in Cut and Shoot with my good friend, now gone for more than a decade, Waldo.

I am getting off track here, but needless to say, Rick Perry didn’t fill up Reliant Stadium with his bunch of shady preachers. I did walk down to the Metro rail stop just outside Reliant to catch a train. When I returned to Reliant and the old fading Astrodome from visiting the Houston Fire Museum and a very cool eatery called Natachee’s Supper and Punch, a fellow wearing a bunch of pins and ribbons, told me to “come on.” He meant for me to come with to the prayer meeting and this fellow added: “I was down at 9/11.” I guess he saw my El Paso Fire Department cap that my friend Rene gave me. I was down at Gee Dubya’s Ranch entrance outside of Crawford on 9/11 talking to some nervous Texas State Troopers. I don’t really know if homeboy who was going to the prayer meeting really had been at the World Trade Center or there abouts on 9/11.  I have spent a lot of time around present and former military folks, both while serving in the Navy and as a writer who covered the military and veterans. If I was going to bet with myself, and I would probably lose at that, I’d have to wager that the fellow might have been at the trade center in his mind on 9/11. I remember getting back to the office that terrible morning after returning from the “Prairie Chapel Ranch” only to discover more than 300 New York and New Jersey firefighters were likely dead at Ground Zero. I couldn’t grasp that number because I once worked for a small fire department with only four stations, at the time, and a total of about 60 personnel.

"Severe Threat?" I heeered that!

Ricky, Ricky, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Ricky, hey Ricky

 

I bring up all this malarkey about lies and the truth and the good truth and the bad truth and the ugly lies and the ugly truth. And so forth, Kurt Vonnegut!

What Rick Perry was trying to do leading a prayer meeting at the Reliant Stadium is beyond me. I think he’s got a bad case of the “cutes.” He is trying to be the cutest presidential candidate what’s never yet run. “Oh I got to me drag this thing out and who knows, I might follow the footsteps of that reprobate George Bush? Eeeeeee. Well, that isn’t how Perry talks. But it should be.”

I have nothing against prayer. And Ricky Boy was not doing his prayer meeting on behalf of the Texas State government. Still, we don’t know all the details as to who is paying for his security and whether or not those Houston police officers or Harris County deputy sheriffs who were out there on Fannin or just off the South Loop directing traffic. But we do know from what Perry and his preachers said, that they were talking up a storm about our government, our national government.

Furthermore, I can’t look into Rick Perry’s heart, into his soul, and see how much of his talking was about his own spirituality and how much was motivated to bring in the “Holy Rollers” who might, at the very least, help Perry get enough support for the GOP vice presidential candidate. I can’t see into Rick’s soul just as I can’t look into “Ground Zero’s” heart.

Are people jivin’ us? Are they telling us little white half-thruths? Beats me. I could have followed Ground Zero into the “Conniption” or whatever Perry called his thing. But I walked on down to the hotel and rested my weary body.

I have talked face-to-face with Rick Perry on several occasions. Each time I looked at him, and asked him a question, it seemed as if I could look right through him. Beyond that hair, beyond that weathered face and beyond that Texas A & M cheerleader “good looks” — I probably should have erased that — I have seen nothing but transparency. I am not talking about transparency as in an open book, I am talking about transparent as nobody’s home.

Not from Benedict, but a thoughtful Catholic voice on Rick’s Old Tyme Religion Hour.

That is what I see in our coy boy governor who, in our Texas vulgar vernacular, I wish would s**t or get off the pot. Run for president. Run for dog catcher. Run for the border. Are you telling us the truth Ricky Boy? Would you know the truth if it slapped you in the face? I don’t know. I do know that if somehow Rick Perry, as close to nothing as anyone I have ever known, ends up being sworn in as president of these U.S. of A., then, I am going to need a change in scenery. A change in nationality.

That, my friends, is no lie.